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Mirror upgrades website, revises guidelines for letters | Alcott

In the next few weeks, The Mirror will be making changes to our website federalwaymirror.com. This new crisp-and-clean design makes space for more stories and photographs on the newspaper’s home page, and also offers easier access to readers on-the-go.

The homepage will be topped by a new navigation bar that boasts a quick-glance box for current weather conditions, along with icons for mobile applications and social media, so readers can quickly share stories and news with others.

Our website will continue to use the “river of news” format with the most current content appearing at the top of the home page. Top stories will feature larger photographs, plus larger headlines and summaries. As more stories and features are published each day, older stories will carry smaller headlines and flow toward the bottom of the homepage. Readers will notice more news on our front page and stories will be easier to share. Underneath each story’s byline, readers will find options for emailing the article, printing a copy, or sending a letter to the editor about the topic.

Along with this new web design, we are changing the guidelines for our letters to the editor that appear on the opinion page in print. Until now, we have printed these letters in full, based on available space. Oftentimes, this results in a significant delay as we receive more letters than we can usually print. With our new website design, we have the ability to run these letters in their entirety online. The print edition will highlight the first few paragraphs from every letter received that week and direct readers online to read the remainder of the letter.

Moreover, this will allow users to post comments and interact with other readers. From time to time, we may print these comments in the print edition on topics that generate a high number of comments.

The Mirror’s website statistics have grown steadily over the past year. It is now consistently one of the most-viewed websites in the Sound Publishing newspaper group, averaging 136,551 page views and 50,587 unique visitors per month.

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